The Return of THE CLOSER – Brenda Leigh is Back, Y’all!

Scene from THE CLOSER

Apparently, I was really on my game, when, in the late spring of 2005, I was asked by the editor of Ocean Drive to select two new series that I felt were going to be the “hot” new shows that summer.  I picked TNT’s The Closer for a drama (and Showtime’s Weeds for a comedy).  Time would prove me right in both cases, but this post is all about The Closer, which has since become not only one of my must-see shows, but would go on to become the highest-rated series in the history of ad-supported cable television.

Sometimes a TV series is a vehicle for a specific actor, with everyone else onscreen serving merely as satellites, circling around the star like planets.  But sometimes, in very special circumstances, what might have set out as a star-vehicle becomes an ensemble show that just so happens to follow one character; a show that would not be half as good without the supporting cast to build it up.  And such is the case with The Closer, returning for its sixth season to TNT, at 9pm on Monday, July 12th.

Scene from THE CLOSER

In the broadest of strokes, the show follows "Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson" of the LAPD, and her Major Crimes Division.  While a brilliant and intuitive detective, she’s a dreadful politician and lousy people-person.  She is a CIA-trained interrogator, who spent seven years with the CIA, followed by four years with the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Colombia, and three and-a-half years with the Atlanta Police Department; which she left, following an ethics review brought-on by a malicious (and unwarranted) accusation by her then-husband, of her sleeping with a younger officer.  As Brenda says in the pilot, “If I liked being called a bitch to my face, I’d still be married.”  Though cleared of the ethics violation, she left Atlanta, and turned-down a position with Homeland Security to head the LAPD’s newly-formed Priority Homicide Division (now Major Crimes).  Now, in LA, she’s working for her old boss (with whom she had a long-ago affair while he was married), has gotten married (to her division’s FBI liaison), and manages to illicit confessions from the most twisted of criminals.  In short, she’s a closer.

Kyra Sedgwick

The show features some of television’s best writing, and is intense and gritty with just enough well-delivered levity to prevent things from getting too heavy.  All of this makes The Closer that rare series where things are timed so perfectly, you have to wonder that they make it all seem so much easier than it really is.  The comic-relief is often played-out through the characters’ humanity (such as Brenda, a sugar-fiend and chocoholic, crawling on her hands and knees across a brutal crime-scene, coming across a bowl of candy on an end-table, deliberating about eating some, then doing so) is so brilliantly acted, in fact, that it makes you laugh out-loud in the middle of a scene that would otherwise be too dark for Prime Time.

Scene from THE CLOSER

The Closer is both a commercial and critical favorite, and has been nominated every year since its debut for awards from the Screen Actors Guild (both Kyra Sedgwick for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series, and the Regular Cast for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series), the Primetime Emmy Awards (Kyra Sedgwick for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series), and the Golden Globe Awards  (Kyra Sedgwick for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series-Drama – which she won in 2007), as well as numerous other distinctions, including Sedgwick’s 2009 win at the People’s Choice Awards for Favorite TV Drama Diva. 

Scene from THE CLOSER

For whatever reason, Jacob wasn’t able to remember the name “Brenda Leigh Johnson” at first, and took to calling Sedgwick’s character “Wanda Jo Jackson.”  I’m not sure why, but I found this particularly funny, so it’s stuck, and it is thusly that we refer to her amongst ourselves.

Kyra Sedgwick

Anyhow – if you aren’t already a fan, you should rectify that immediately; either by purchasing the first five seasons on DVD, or watching the series from the beginning, weekdays at 2pm on TNT, starting this Monday.  And for those of you who are already hooked, you’ve just got one more week to wait.

To bring you up-to-speed, view a recap of Season Five, by clicking on the video-clip, below; and in the words of Brenda Leigh: “Thank you.  Thank you, so much.”

The Closer on TNT
Mondays at 9pm
Season Premiere – Monday, July 12th

Get into it!